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Saturday, 7 March 2015

Up close with a Dartford Warbler...or two

Chris and I have been planning a project looking at Dartford Warblers for a while now and today we finally got the chance to put our plans into action. It was a fantastic bright and sunny spring morning except for being a little breezy, but we thought we would give it a go anyway. The wind was forecast to pick up even more later in the morning, so I met Chris at 7am and headed to the site.

It was breezier than we had hoped, which was made worse by the fact that the site was quite open. We spied our quarry immediately but had no joy at the first site, but at the second we caught a male and a female. There is something pretty special about the small Sylvia warblers, and I have been fortunate to see a few species over the years. In the hand though they are even more stunning.

The male bird has a dark grey head and grey-brown back which contrasts with the dark wine-red underparts, the iris and eye ring are bright red and fine white spots are present on the throat.

Male Dartford Warbler

Male Dartford Warbler

The female is duller with the head and back browner, the eye ring and iris are duller and the underparts paler. The throat is also paler and lacks the white spots.

Female Dartford Warbler

Female Dartford Warbler

I used to ring quite a few Dartford Warblers when I ringed at a site on Hayling Island, but haven't ringed one for a while now, so it was a real treat to catch some again. The wind had really got up by the time we had finished processing the birds, and so rather than try and catch more we decided to wander around and see how many territories we could find. In the full sun there were plenty of males singing and by the end of our stroll we had recorded nine territories, so plenty to do this spring.

Male Dartford Warbler

Male Dartford Warbler

Male Dartford Warbler

There were plenty of other species singing, particularly Linnets and Greenfinches and a handful of Skylark and Meadow Pipits. A pair of Long-tailed Tits were also busy looking for a nest site and were very approachable.